Microsoft said that the headsets will start at $299 and will include inside-out tracking sensors, obviating the need for external cameras or laser systems like those on the current Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer are all listed as partners.

CrckrJack wrote:Source of the post Sure but it takes up space. Which isn't the end of the world, you are right. But it is more to the package versus not having them at all.

I think some/a lot people actually mount them to the walls, that would be slick. Domontonoto, what do you do with your light houses? The one I borrowed had them on tri-pod stands that set up in seconds.

Tyler wrote:I think some/a lot people actually mount them to the walls, that would be slick. Domontonoto, what do you do with your light houses? The one I borrowed had them on tri-pod stands that set up in seconds.

I have them screwed into the upper corners of my living room. I've been considering getting the tripods so that I could move from room to room after Baby is born, but I haven't yet. The one issue I found with this is if there are things hanging in the middle of the room between the sensors, I had to run the sync wire between the two light houses.

Less than 1 year since the original Microsoft announcement and now the page is live with 5 headsets built from a number of Microsoft partners. Will be interesting to hear how they all compare against each other.

Tested guys didn't try the Samsung one, but they said the cheaper Microsoft headsets have noticeably better resolution. They said the hand tracking is great, but fear it might look weird in social games. Still too early to say if you should buy this over a Rift or Vive.

I still haven't heard anything about inside out tracking for the room. Does it know where your wall and couch is? I assume you could hit a wall beside you if you weren't looking at it and nothing would warn you

We spent a couple hours at the mall yesterday and I went by the Microsoft kiosk/store thing at least 3 times to look at the Microsoft headsets. I had Evie with me at the time so I knew I couldn't demo them until Jocelyn took her, but I still wanted to talk to the employees about their thoughts vs Rift since they had both demos going. None of the times I went by did an employee even look my way. I was hoping to talk to them and come back later to try it out, but none of it happened.

I see Microsoft is having $100 off all the headsets for Black Friday. The Samsung one is still the only one that interests me, but it isn't out yet or on display. I heard the screen is way better than Rift, but the controllers are not.

Tyler wrote:We spent a couple hours at the mall yesterday and I went by the Microsoft kiosk/store thing at least 3 times to look at the Microsoft headsets. I had Evie with me at the time so I knew I couldn't demo them until Jocelyn took her, but I still wanted to talk to the employees about their thoughts vs Rift since they had both demos going. None of the times I went by did an employee even look my way. I was hoping to talk to them and come back later to try it out, but none of it happened.

I see Microsoft is having $100 off all the headsets for Black Friday. The Samsung one is still the only one that interests me, but it isn't out yet or on display. I heard the screen is way better than Rift, but the controllers are not.

The screen is the least of my concerns, tracking and hands are more important. If the screen is better but the headset gets warmer is also a big concern for me. Mine gets mildly uncomfortable after an hour

I made a handful of threads on Reddit and shotout to this guy for giving me a great answer:

I'm a Rift owner and we also bought that same HP WMR bundle from the Microsoft store as well as the similar CyberPower PC bundle from Best Buy. They both came with a Ryzen 1400 and a RX 580 and a WMR headset.

While I prefer the build quality of the CyberPower PC, the HP Pavilion isn't bad. The inside of the HP is rather spartan. It contains a generic uATX board, and a mini-sized one-fan Radeon RX 580. I forget the memory brand but it might have been Samsung. The PSU I think was 300 watts, the typical one they put in HP computers.

The HP Pavilion tower is really compact and really light, and fairly quiet. It made it really easy to move the HP PC around the house to test out different rooms as potential playrooms for VR. The HP PC has bluetooth and wifi. You'll need bluetooth for the HP headset.

Our HP PC came with Windows build 1703 installed, so you'll have to update it to the Fall Creators Update (build 1709) which has support for Windows Mixed Reality devices. The update took a few hours (after several restarts for updates) for me on a wired internet connection.

After you're on build 1709, then you're almost there. Just plug in the HP WMR headset and it should start up the Windows Mixed Reality setup. Note, it will NOW also download two gigs more for the Mixed Reality Portal. After that, you should be all set up to go. You can proceed to use Cliff House or start loading up Steam.

One issue I ran into was that the RX 580 that comes in the HP only has one HDMI port and three display ports. The HP headset will need to use the HDMI port (and a 3.0 USB port) so in order to hook up your monitor, you'll need to use one of the three available display ports.If your external monitor doesn't have display port, then you'll need to use a display-port-to-hdmi (or DVI) adapter/cable, depending on your monitor input type.

I was also really impressed at how the HP Pavillion and HP headset performed in Sairento VR, which requires 360 tracking.It's nice not as smooth as my Oculus Rift on my i7 Coffee Lake PC with a GTX 1070, but for a VR setup with no sensors, only 8GB of RAM on a $200-ish video card, it was surprisingly capable.

Steam and Microsoft are still updating the software so SteamVR performance should continue to improve but don't expect frame rates to be the same as SteamVR games on your Rift. At least not yet.

As for the HP headset itself, I like it. Aside from the premium quality Samsung Odyssey, all the WMR headsets are fairly similar. My Oculus Rift feels a little lighter but the HP headset didn't feel real heavy to me. I like the dial in the back to tighten the headset, and I've worn it comfortably for more than an hour.

However, sometimes my forehead after awhile can get a little numb if I've tightened the headset too tight, and the sweet spot of the WMR headset is more narrow than the Rift so I have to fidget with it sometimes.

The Rift Touch controllers are also way better than the HP motion controllers, but I do like the motion controllers. They eat batteries like crazy though, but the touchpad is nice. The touchpad made it easier to teleport in some games than using the Rift Touch joystick.

That's a great response. For your Dad I think WMR makes a ton of sense since he won't have to worry about extra sensors. He can bring it to someone's house or play in different rooms without having to fiddle with extra set up.